Important Vlasto Oikistes Nomos

Sale: CNG 81, Lot: 14. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009.  Sold For $1083. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CALABRIA, Tarentum. Circa 470-465 BC. AR Nomos (6.33 g, 12h). Taras as Oikistes seated right, holding distaff and kantharos / Phalanthos riding dolphin right, arms outstretched; cockle shell below. Fischer-Bossert group 6, 104c (V53/R68) = Vlasto, Taras type 1, b = Vlasto 162 = W. Giesecke, Italia Numismatica (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1928), pl. 4, 3 (this coin); HN Italy 843; Kraay & Hirmer 298 (same dies); Kunstfreund 63 (same dies). VF, toned, porous. Extremely rare early Oikistes issue.

From the Colin E. Pitchfork Collection. Ex Vecchi 17 (15 December 1999), lot 476; M.P. Vlasto Collection, 162 [’found in Tarento in 1910’].

This coin is from a very short series, known from one pair of dies, of which only three coins are known (the other two are, respectively, in Naples and a private collection). These dies are regarded as among the finest style in all Tarentine coinage. Vlasto (Taras, p. 25) discusses the issue as "[t]his beautiful and, in my experience, all but unique nomos, was published by Fiorelli (Catalogo del Museo Nazionale de Napoli I, Monete greche, Napoli [1870], no. 1800) when describing briefly the splendid example in the Naples cabinet.... This coin is an admirable example of all that is finest in Græco-Ionian archaic art, and is certainly one of the masterpieces of Magna Græcia's early coinage." Commenting specifically on this coin, Vlasto (pp. 25-6) states that "[t]he obverse of the specimen that I am fortunate in possessing, owing to its worn condition strongly recalls several beautiful early grave stelæ. Sir Arthur Evans has rightly pointed out in his famous monograph (The Horsemen of Tarentum, pp. 18-9), the striking parallelism between the earliest Oikistes of this type and the old Spartan sepulchral reliefs on which the heroized deceased holding out a kantharos, is represented seated upon a similar throne, alone or with his wife. In fact this type gives us the key to the meaning of this new type." A second pair of dies for this issue is recorded by Fischer-Bossert (105, V54/R69), but these are likely the product of a contemporary forger, as the only two coins known from this paring are both fourrée (Vlasto, Taras, pp. 24-5 and 29-30; though Fischer-Bossert, p. 69, only noted one of these as possibly fourrée).